Police: Alleged victim of ex-River Rat showed signs of intoxication

A woman allegedly sodomized by former River Rats hockey player Robert “Bobby” Hughes in 2008 appeared intoxicated, disheveled and unsure of her whereabouts early that morning, police and witnesses testified Monday.

Hughes, 22, a Toronto area native, is charged with first-degree commitment of a criminal sex act, a felony carrying up to 25 years in prison. His lawyer, Robert Molloy, has said Hughes and the woman had a “one-night stand” — and said it was consensual with no crime occurring.

Key to the case is the mental state of the woman. Assistant District Attorney Shannon Sarfoh has told jurors the alleged victim was in no condition to consent to sex with Hughes.

On Monday, Bethlehem Officer Chad Ferraro testified the woman, now 40, showed “difficulties with balance and standing” after he responded to the woman’s 911 call in Delmar.

A breath test signaled positive for alcohol, he told jurors.

Bethlehem Police Sgt. Gina Cocchiara, who was at the scene with the woman at Elm Street and Delaware Avenue, told jurors Monday the woman was “visibly upset” and had slurred speech.

Cocchiara said another officer had described the woman as “agitated and intoxicated and didn’t know how she got there.”

Cocchiara said the woman, crying and belligerent, at one point accused police of treating her like a criminal — and fired off a four-letter word at her. She said the woman declined an ambulance and medics.

A former neighbor in the Delmar apartment complex where Hughes lived at the time also testified Monday. He told jurors he and his girlfriend saw the alleged victim and a couple earlier in the night at a Veterans of Foreign Wars location in Delmar. He said he and his girlfriend were later awoken from their sleep by ringing at the door. When he went outside – a baseball bat by the ready– he noticed the same woman outside.

He said she looked confused, “a little more disheveled” than earlier in the night and “seemed a little unsure where she was.”

The man’s girlfriend later testified she also spotted the woman outside the apartment near Hughes’ then-roommate, Harrison Reed. She said the woman appeared upset and “didn’t look comfortable in her surroundings” but was not swaying or stumbling.

She says after the couple left My Place, she remained inside the bar because she saw from friends from high school. The next thing she remembered was waking up in a parking lot outside the apartment complex, she testified.

Both her friend and the friend’s boyfriend testified Monday. The friend said she, her boyfriend and the alleged victim first went to a Polish-American club in Albany and then a VFW in Delmar. She said they went to My Place for food. She said she and the alleged victim, who had not eaten all day, ordered boneless chicken wings, but the friend remembered either eating much.

She said the alleged victim spoke with Hughes at the bar — but did not indicate any attraction to him.

Over the course of the night, the friend said the alleged victim drank some beer and Vodka and cranberry juice drinks, showing a “little buzz on throughout.” By the time she and her boyfriend left My Place, the woman was “a little more tipsy than previously,” the friend testified.

Earlier Monday, the alleged victim’s sister testified that when she picked her sister up the following day to take her to Albany Medical Center, the woman had bruises and cuts from “head-to-toe.”